‘Look here,’ said Gore desperately, ‘I must smoke a pipe. If I don’t I shall start in to break up the furniture or something.’
‘Yes, yes. Give me a cigarette. You’re sure you shut that door properly?
‘… Well, I thought I had done with him—though, of course, I feared all along that he might have kept my letters. But time went by, and—you know the way things that have happened dull off and stop worrying you. I had met Sidney … that helped me to forget about things I didn’t want to remember, too … We were married for a whole year before anything happened to make me in the least uneasy. And then one day Mr Barrington rang me up and said, “I want to see you. I shall be on the Downs, somewhere along the avenue, at half-past two. You’d better come along and see me.” Of course I refused at first, and, of course, in the end I got frightened and went. He was very hard up—that was his story at first … quite a polite, apologetic sort of story. Could I lend him a hundred pounds? I lent him a hundred pounds. Then I lent him another hundred. Then he asked for two hundred. I made a fuss—not that the money mattered so much, but because I had begun to realise by that time that he was not simply borrowing money from me, but demanding it. However, I gave him the two hundred—and, of course, he saw then that he had me—that I was afraid of him. And so it has gone on ever since, for two years. I think he has had about fifteen hundred pounds altogether, so far. Fifteen or sixteen, I’m not sure which. Sidney never dreams of asking me what I do with my own money … but of course I’ve been jolly careful in drawing the cheques for the money I paid away that way. So that I can’t be quite sure now myself. But it’s fifteen hundred at any rate.
‘Then I thought that if I gave him a really large sum, in one lump, he might be persuaded to give me back my letters. The letters are the trouble, you see. He said he would if I gave him six hundred. I agreed to that—that was about a fortnight or so ago. I agreed to make four payments of a hundred and fifty each, spread over two or three weeks. I was afraid to draw out so much money at once—because, of course, he insisted on being paid in cash.’
‘He would,’ Gore agreed grimly.
‘He insisted also on coming here to the house at night for the money. Of course, like a fool, I consented to that too, in the end. Though I might have known that his idea was to use that, afterwards, as an additional hold over me. But I gave way to him. I would have agreed to anything to get my letters back and have done with it. He came three nights and got a hundred and fifty each time. Last night he came again—I gave him the last hundred and fifty, and then he refused to give up the letters after all—said I must give him another four hundred— My God, Wick … what am I to do? What am I to do? It’s killing me. I shall go silly if it goes on much longer.’
He made no reply for a little space, stifling an inevitable inclination to sit in judgment and to consider what this ugliness just revealed to him meant to him rather than what it must have meant to her who had lived with it for two years. It was no moment for sentiment or for virtuous comment, he reminded himself. Facts were facts and must be faced—however ugly and disillusioning. Had he got all of them, even yet?
‘The letters are … very awkward?’
‘Very. Those I wrote to him after the episode at Bournemouth especially.’
‘You mean … a third person who read them would realise that the Bournemouth episode had taken place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Um. Well, then, you’ve got to get them back, that’s clear, somehow. Unless you face the music and tell your husband? …’
She shook her head.
‘No. I’d rather kill myself, Wick. In fact, I’ve been seriously thinking of killing myself all day.’
He grinned.
‘The more seriously the better …’
‘No. I’m not merely talking about it for the sake of talking about it. I’m not that sort, Wick. I could do it quite easily. Sidney has plenty of things in his consulting-room. All I have to do is sneak his keys. After all—what is it—to kill oneself? What is anything—if you once make up your mind to it? Things seem big and imposing and terrible and difficult … just to think of. But when you come to do them, they’re just a little movement of your hand or your tongue or your throat … nothing. Who, to look at me, would think for a moment that I could deliberately try to kill someone else? No one. And yet I did try, last night—tried deliberately. I didn’t succeed, as it happened. But do you think it seemed anything to me while I was trying to do it? Nothing. The simplest, flattest thing in the world. My dear man, if I once make up my mind to do myself in, I shall do it like a bird. And about the best thing I could do, it seems to me.’
‘Yes, yes. However—to keep to brass tacks. Do I understand you to say, seriously, that you made an attempt to do Mr Barrington in last night—while he was here—in this house?’
‘Yes. I tried to stab him with one of those little poisoned knives—you know … the things you were talking of to Sidney last night in the hall …’
‘What?’
‘Yes. I heard what you said to Sidney. I was on the stairs, just outside this room, while you were talking about them. I remembered, then, afterwards. If I had been just a shade quicker … well, I suppose I should have been in gaol by this time. But I should have got my letters and burnt them. There would have been plenty of time—at least I thought there would have been—before anyone came down and found him in the hall … All the night. And so Sidney would never have known. I meant just to give him a scratch. I heard you say a little prick would be enough. I should have had to fudge up some story—but I’m quite capable of doing that.’
Her matter-of-factness staggered him. He drew a long breath. ‘Phew …’
For a little while he paced to and fro between the fireplace and the door.
‘What happened? He took the knife from you, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I was trying to get it out of the little cover or sheath or whatever you call it … behind my back. And he grabbed my wrist and took it from me.’
‘Did he take it away with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘The knife and the sheath?’
‘Yes. Both. He put the knife into the sheath before he put it into his pocket. Why?’
‘Because, last night, about a quarter-past two or thereabouts, I found the sheath lying on the ground among some leaves, over there beside the gates leading into the hotel grounds. He must have thrown it away when he got outside. No, though. He had his car outside—just near your hall door, by the way—’
She uttered an exclamation of dismay. Then her eyes hardened in suspicion.
‘How do you know that? How do you know his car was there?’
‘Arndale told Challoner he saw it there a little after one o’clock … and Challoner told me … and Heaven knows how many other people since. However … to return to this confounded sheath. Barrington wouldn’t take his car over there into that corner, would he? That’s the one direction he wouldn’t take it. To get to Hatfield Place from here, he’d go along Aberdeen Place or Selkirk Place—I don’t know, though. Perhaps he went up that lane over there at the back of the hotel, and chucked the knife away as he passed the gates … into the Green. Yes. He might have done that. Though why exactly he should throw the knife away …’
She shook her head with conviction.
‘No. He wouldn’t throw it away. I’m quite sure of that. He put it away in his pocket carefully before he went out of the hall. He intended to keep it—he